I salute you! There is nothing I can give you which you have not;
but there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take Heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take Peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it yet, within our reach, is joy.
Take Joy.

And so…I greet you with the prayer that for you,
now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
— Fra Giovanni, Christmas Eve, 1513

Your brightness is my darkness.
I know nothing of You and, by myself,
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You.
If I imagine You, I am mistaken.
If I understand You, I am deluded.
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough.

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat’s feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.

When I am not present to myself,
then I am only aware of that half of me,
that mode of my being which turns outward to created things.
And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them.
Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull
of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self toward God.
My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties. My senses, my imagination, my emotions,
scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth.
Recollection brings them home.
It brings the outward self into line with the inward spirit,
and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love
that reaches down into the mystery of God.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.

~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Reality and Experience – Morphic Fields and The Power Of Choice

All the earth is dark now, and all the trees are bare.
From evil we were guarded by brave St. Michael.
Away are evil spirits cast down on Halloween.
And now we hope for Advent: Will inner light be seen?
Candle-light might help us where daylight must decline.
We pray that in our hearts and mood, the Christmas light may shine.

Traditional Advent song (shared by Waldorf School of Anchorage)

When winter comes to a woman’s soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her deepest spaces. She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she should engage in the world. She may say she is resting, but she is more than resting: She is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what needs to thrive.
Winter women are those who bring into the next cycle what should be saved. They are the deep conservators of knowledge and power. Not for nothing did ancient peoples honor the grandmother. In her calm deliberateness, she winters over our truth, she freezes out false-heartedness.
Look into her eyes, this winter woman. In their gray spaciousness you can see the future. Look out of your own winter eyes. You too can see the future.

~ Patricia Monaghan

This morning just before  sunrise I looked out of the back window of the house where the crabapple tree arches over the house. My attention was riveted on a single crabapple and how it hung by a thin stem onto the sleeping tree. How it stayed there by a tiny thread. It moved me. “Why?”  I asked myself.

I then traced the line of connection from the crabapple, down the twig, the small branch, the large branch, the trunk, and into the roots. The answer came that I was moved because of the connection, the absence of separation between the crabapple and the roots. I felt this connection in myself, in my heart.

When I resolve to hold onto this connectedness, this oneness, I have the strength of my own heart and I can live my life from the heart. I can bear the pain that comes my way without projecting it out onto the “other,” in order to avoid feeling it.

The reward? Self possession. An awakened heart.

Thank you, dear crabapple tree.

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/jurassic-bark-ancient-irish-trees-brought-back-to-life-1.1971695

http://www.woodlandleague.org/